How we progress

A series of poems composed months apart: how a connection can progress

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You’d have seven minutes, only those
To capture her unfolding –
Flowing –
At night.
You could slow her – tease her – only
After the fact revising
Those moments:
This new scene, just right.
You’d have to be still enough to mark
The flutter, her unveiling
Carefully,
Your approach –
Light.
Tender enough to coax her out:
Her center, its depths –
Pausing
Waiting for her to start

But you didn’t. You left her furled,
Contracted! That
Shifting yellow flower,
Just outside,
Through your window,
Unfolding only certain hours.
A risk, a challenge to take her! but
I don’t think you much cared –
The idea was mine
And she remained
Unobserved,
Divine

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Is this parting pain not pleasure?
I sit, and ashes linger
From the dead place we ascended
Was it there the solace ended?
In winter air warm on old eruptions
Near Mercury’s broken prayers (reconstructed) –
Was it there where time’s cycle brought us back,
Folded us up
And traced rearwards our path?
From beginning and fiddling insecurities apprehended
To rejoinder, affiliation, then recognition and relief:
The train of emotion that let us off safe
Reversing, again, to our starting place!
We rolled back through the failure, the fears felt before
And I wonder –
Will I never know which ones were yours?
Or mine, casting shadows like the once-fiery dome
That reminded me: yes,
At times we’re alone

• ● ● ● ●

Little pinpricks, pangs of hope
Are thumbing ‘long my skin
They generate as wishes clear,
And anxiety, sadness, hurt within.
My sweet salope! I’ll sweat you out
To make way for clearer vision
(A fantasy’s revision):

Seeing you, dear,
When will it be?
Never again?
Or already before?
Have I tied myself up
Because I want something more?
When you’re that beautiful…

But it’s how we progress,
It’s like this we all grow
And you’ve disinterred something
I thought I’d already known:
That it’s not about permanence
Or demanding your time,
Not about digging in claws
And “making you mine”
But about reveling in connection,
What we can create
And remembering, often,
How I think you’re fucking great!